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sl4shd0rk writes "Hackers can now build applications directly on their Android devices with the beta release of AIDE. The Android IDE is at beta version 7, and already allows editing and compiling of apps as well as integration with LogCat. AIDE is even compatible with projects started on Eclipse so you can move a project over and work on it. Finally, a reason to get yourself that Transformer keyboard dock?"
sl4shd0rk also provided a screencast which is attached. InfoQ has a short interview with the developers. Mildly interesting is that it does the compilation on device instead of shipping the work off to some network service or other. The app is, like a lot of Android stuff, only free cost with no corresponding source code at the moment.

I've been suspecting that the way Google is going, that the chrome browser will eventually have a full chrome based Android VM in the cloud or at least android apps in the cloud. log in once and your apps are there for those times your phone isn't.

I've had this installed on my tablet and phone for a couple of weeks now and its actually pretty amazing. I was in Chili's a couple of nights ago and was waiting on my girlfriend to show up when inspiration struck. I have a project that I've been working on that was sitting in my Drop box so I just pulled my GNex out and went to work. In about 10 minutes, I had made the changes to my source code, compiled the app and tested it right there at the table. It was practically surreal. A real Android app edited and installed right on my phone. Will I start using my phone as my dev station from now on? Of course not but damned if AIDE didn't come through in a big way the other night.

The mention of the girlfriend casts your whole story into doubt. Nice try. You might as well have gone for the gold and said "I was in a hot tub with Charlie Sheen and the Lakers cheerleaders the other night..."

> I was in Chili's a couple of nights ago and was waiting on my> girlfriend to show up when inspiration struck... In about 10> minutes, I had made the changes to my source code, compiled> the app and tested it right there at the table.

What did you do for the remaining 80 minutes it took her to show up?;-)

For people that can't hear, sign language is pretty nice. For those times when inspiration hits and you are nowhere nearyour laptop, this is great news. Not to mention the fact that not all Android devices are constrained to touch only input and AIDE features comprehensive keyboard shortcuts for Transformer style devices.

My phone (Samsung Epic 4g) has a 5 inch wide physical keyboard with 49 keys (53 if you count the android keys). It would be just fine to program in a character heavy language like basic, though a brace/bracket/peren heavy language will require a lot of function key twiddling.

not that bad if you have a transformer prime with a keyboard. Thats not a full mechanical keyboard, but its better than many lap-top keyboards ive used:) and you can plug a mouse in if you don't like trackpad. Didn't try plugging a normal keyboard in the usb...maybe it would work?

Actually trying to write code with a bluetooth keyboard is kinda fail at the moment. It seems as though some sort of process runs with every keypress, on slower devices this == missed letters while typing.

The Palm platform had a C compiler and resource editor back in 2000, allowing native Palm apps to be created on Palms themselves. Look up "onboard c palm" on Google for full details. There's also Quartus, an onboard Forth development environment which could compile to native code, and could use the same resource editor as OnBoard C. I'm surprised that it's taken this long for anyone to release an onboard IDE for Android....

This isn't the first or only way to code for Android on Android. See TerminalIDE [google.com] c4droid [google.com] for your C compiling needs, and the scripting layer for Android [google.com] for Python, Perl, Ruby, PHP, beanshell, etc. There have been many ways to code for Android on a device for years it's just this one is coming to popular attention right now because it is so good.

This sounds really neat. Sometimes I just want to write a small algorithm and test it while it's fresh in my head. About 15 years ago I wrote an entire game on a handheld HP 200LX handheld PC, using Turbo C while I was vacationing far away from real computers. It's a challenge and it's quite fun. Don't mock it until you try it.

I've actually been thinking about getting rid of my laptop in favor of a Transformer and keyboard dock, and this makes it much more likely. Now the biggest hurdle is waiting for someone to come out with a 12" Android tablet with a keyboard dock.

Although this is nice, I'm not sure why anyone would want to do it. Its easy enough already to side-load the app onto a device through the USB. Also, Eclipse + the Android SDK is portable enough to run on several powerful desktop operating systems...I've developed Android apps on Ubuntu and Windows Vista easily enough. Most android programmers and many Java programmers develop through Eclipse so, that is what they are comfortable with...Why learn a new IDE?

I could develop apps straight on the N900 using Qt Quick for nearly 2 years now.

Before that C++, Ruby, Python, PHP, were all available for hacking away at code.

As others have mentioned, coding on a phone is no fun, but with PyGTK Editor and a bluetooth keyboard (iGo Stowaway[why did they stop making this awesome keyboard?]), long commutes and boring classes have just become far more interesting.